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Convicted Friend Of Clinton Raps Starr's Tactics

ATLANTA, GEORGIA — Presidential friend Webster Hubbell says he believes Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr's Whitewater probe was "an investigation of individuals looking for a crime" rather than an effort to solve a crime.

The former No. 3 Justice Department official, Hubbell pleaded guilty in June to a charge of concealing legal work on a fraudulent Arkansas land project.

In a speech Friday to lawyers at the American Bar Association's annual convention here, he said that after he pleaded guilty to an earlier charge in 1994 and agreed to cooperate with Whitewater prosecutors, investigators wanted him "to say something about wrongdoing on behalf of the president or first lady."

"If I did not do so, that would not be considered cooperation," Hubbell said. "My impression was that cooperation meant agreeing to, as they say in prison parlance, roll on somebody.

"This is a very common practice, which came as a huge surprise to me."